Oops...

Um, so I went into my archives for January of 2009 to see my goals for the year and do the comparison... and realized that I never actually posted them.  There is a scanty reference to them coming up "later this week" in a post in the first week of January, but they never materialized.  Hmm. That 'splains a LOT about this year!!

I guess rather than bemoan the fact that obviously life intervened and made me forget to post my goals, it is probably better to go ahead and quantify my goals for 2010 right here, right now, so that I'm not in the same boat a year from now.  Thinking back, I recall that there were a lot of things in flux in my life then, and that probably had a lot to do with not setting the goals at that time. that, or I just forgot...

In any case, I can still reflect fairly fully on my year without having the goals as a reference point.  I think it says a lot about me as a runner, as an athlete, that I continued to run and to race without a formal plan, just because it's such an ingrained part of who I am now.  Someone pretty close to me told me this summer that I didn't need to make a statement about who I am at every turn; however, I am sure that I do that with my running because even after more than five years of distance running, six marathons, a score of half marathons and countless shorter races, I still feel compelled to label myself a runner. I don't yet look the part, because people are still surprised when they find out that I run marathons.  So maybe this year, I quit worrying about that so much and just let it be a part of who I am, and stop having to broadcast it, just to prove something to others.

In terms of races, I did a 5K with my younger son, barely finished the Cowtown Marathon, and I placed in the 5K at my son's school.  I had a blast running in one of the largest 10Ks in the country and then walked back to the hotel in the rain at the Bolder Boulder (um, yeah, I forgot to do that race report, too...).  After a summer of turmoil, I picked up the races again with the Turkey Trot and the Arlington Winter Run 10K (yeah, no race report there, either - it was cold, I know that!), then re-committed to longer distances with the Chasing Lions Half Marathon.  My times were slower than I'd wished, but for the most part, I was happy that I was able to be out there and running.

In terms of overall fitness and health, I had a couple of ups and downs throughout the year.  I put on more weight than I was happy with throughout the summer, even on the heels of a 100-mile month in June. I tried, and sadly abandoned both kettlebells and Insanity workouts (both of which I intend to pick up very soon, btw), and had varying level of success with the 100-pushup challenge and 100-situps.  I finally got my health issues mostly resolved in October, and since then, my body is finally cooperating with me, in that I have dropped some weight pretty effortlessly and am finally seeing some better results of the exercise and eating choices (when I make them, that is...). So I'm hopeful that this continues into the new year.

Personally, this year has been wracked by life intervening in a big, bad way.  Our entire existence was turned inside out and it has had a ripple effect on every aspect of our day-to-day activities. I've got a new job that I wasn't expecting, a new routine that I haven't worked out quite yet, and new challenges that we didn't anticipate having to deal with. The upside is that our family has grown stronger, and closer, and we have herded together to combat them together. We're still finding our way, though, and we do expect more to change.  There are some constants, though, and we are even more appreciative of those now than we were in the past.

So, all that is to say that 2009 kind of happened to me.  I know I had planned to run 1200 miles this year, as evidenced by my set-up page in my running log.  But when I decided not to do Oklahoma City, and then didn't get into the NYC marathon, my motivation flew away, and that went by the wayside.  I pumped up my numbers with the June streak, but the overall drive to get 100 miles a month was pretty much done in by my crappy showing at Cowtown.  Instead of bucking up and getting it done, I instead retreated into the shorter distances and the quick runs.  Well, that didn't work out so well.  This year, I'm taking an alternative strategy from the get-go.  More on that later (this time, I PROMISE!!).

For now, we'll look at the numbers for 2009, with comparisons from 2008/2007 in parentheses: 

Total miles for 2008: 901 (894; 1001)
Average miles/month: 75 (75; 91)
Average miles/week: 17.3  (17.1; 21)
Highest weekly mileage:  37 (37; 35)
Highest month: January 110  (December, 102; Sept, 123)
Lowest month: September, 44 (July, 50; May, 38)